Mind the gap: what next after a brief encounter?

Lisa Forest

12:02AM BST 25 Jul 2008

A holiday abroad brings family together, while a love of Salman Rushdie leads to an electrifying meeting

The last time I came to the family apartment in Spain, I came alone, to write my novel and get used to the idea of a future without a partner. For three weeks I barely spoke to another soul. This time, the flat is so full of people that we keep crashing into one another in the hallway.

My sister Anna, my brother-in-law Mike and my 20-year-old son Ben are all here. Coming this weekend is his girlfriend Mia. My nephew and his heavily pregnant wife have arrived to attend a wedding, while two girlfriends have checked into the hotel next door.

Mike is great at playing host. He mixes Cosmopolitans with the skill of a Manhattan bartender.

Did I really drink eight of them on Tuesday? I lost count after five. As the sun goes down over the Med, the iPod is plugged into speakers on the terrace and we eat, drink and dance into the small hours, a motley gang ranging in age from 20 to 60-plus. For chunks of time I forget about everything except enjoying myself with people I love.

It was only a couple of months ago that I was last here, but much has happened. Emails have been batting back and forth from Australia - where my husband Matt is continuing his adult gap year - about the sale of our home in England, so that we can split our assets and Matt can be free to keep roaming the globe.

He plans to return to England in September to set things in motion and see our son. I sense that Ben is beginning to miss his dad.

"What," I asked Ben one evening, "do you remember doing with me when you were a child?"

"You mean apart from hanging around in Joseph while you tried on clothes?" he teased.

I threw a chip at Ben, and he threw one back. If there is anything I am confident about, it's the job I've done as a mother and the strength of the bond between us.

But it did make me think about how the myriad things a mother does for her son - from soothing, playing, cooking, caring, not to mention reading Of Mice and Men just so that she can discuss it with him in the run-up to his GCSE - fade in the memory compared to the adventures he has with his father.

On the other hand, Ben has chosen to be here on holiday with me and our extended family. If the quiet things a mother does shine less brightly, their effect is surely at least as enduring.

After the death of our beloved father only three weeks ago, I kept finding my sister crying during our first few days here. She's doing less of that now. Instead, we talk about him.

He taught me all the names of the flowers and plants back at home; now their more exotic cousins assault me with memories - jasmine, oleander, plumbago, lantana and hibiscus. We go to his favourite pavement fish restaurant in San Pedro and order his favourite fish, lenguado alla plancha. We toast him in his absence.

This morning, amid my usual 90-minute walk, I stopped by the English bookshop for a cappuccino and a browse. There was an attractive man with a shock of grey hair and electric blue eyes sitting at the table next to me as I leafed through a Spanish cookery book.

He was reading The Enchantress of Florence, Salman Rushdie's new novel. As he glanced up, he saw me looking at him and smiled broadly. I felt grateful that my sunglasses were there to hide my sudden shyness. "Are you a fan of Rushdie?" he asked, in lightly accented English.

It was more than an hour later that I remembered I'd promised to accompany my sister to the supermarket. "Before you go," he said, as I jumped up suddenly, "would you give me your number?"

"With pleasure," I replied, stripped bare of my usual reticence by blue skies and sunshine, "it would be good to meet again."

"What took you so long?" asked my sister when I turned up at the pool. "I met a man," I said. "You did?" she replied. "How likely is that? Look, it doesn't matter, we can go to the supermarket later."

I settled down on a sunbed and took out of my bag the book I'd bought just before I'd started to drink my cappuccino. I, too, had chosen the new Rushdie. I wonder if he'll call, I thought, before turning to the first page.